New Report Says Not To Expect New Apple TV At WWDC

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Signs were indicating an Apple TV refresh coming in time for the Worldwide Developers Conference next week, but a new credible report indicates it’s not something we should expect to see; The New York Times’ Brian X. Chen, who has a good track record when it comes to Apple predictions, says Apple decided recently to hold off announcing its new set-top streaming box.

The NYT’s report cites “people briefed on the device” as the source of the information, and says that it simply “was not ready to be demonstrated.” It goes on to elaborate that Apple TV content provided one of the main stumbling blocks, since plans to create a channel bundle of live programming for use across Apple devices weren’t entirely in place just yet.

The content package has been discussed before; back in March, news from the WSJ suggested it would be launched in September, after an initial unveiling at next week’s event. Even without the service itself, new hardware was thought to also be bringing an open Apple TV SDK, allowing any third-party developer to target the platform.

What is coming at WWDC is a native Watch developer platform, which Apple’s Jeff Williams previously revealed would be announced at the developer-focused conference ahead of a full launch of native apps later in the year. Apple Watch apps that run on the Watch itself will most likely debut in September alongside new iPhone hardware, after they’ve had a few months to explore the SDK in a pre-release format, this time with actual hardware to hopefully test on, too.

It sound like Apple will have plenty to discuss at the event regardless, with new versions of iOS 9 and OS X likely, and possibly our first preview of the next major update for Watch OS alongside the definite reveal of native development tools.